BECOMING

two SOULS, alas, are dwelling in my breast, and one is striving to forsake its brother

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

I always had a hard time understanding why Jack shows any measure of trust in Will after him tells to his face that he wishes he had ran away with Hannibal (twice), but I think that at, long last, during this rewatch it dawned on me the reason why.

Because you see, Jack understands the appeal of this relationship for Hannibal. I think he's very insightful when he talks with Pazzi about it, about how Will is able to understand and accept Hannibal.

But I don't think that Jack believes that Will's desire to be with Hannibal is genuine. I think he believes that this is a byproduct of Will's empathy being off the charts, and that he is confusing Hannibal's desires with his own.

He tells him as much, during Tome-Wan:

And when he's talking with Pazzi, he also tells him that he "broke" Will's imagination.

And in Dolce, when Will tells him part of him will always wants to be with Hannibal, he just tells him to cut it out.

I think this is why during the Red Dragon arc Jack still looks for Will's help. While I think by that time neither one of them is interested in their friendship anymore and their relationship is purely professional (even a hostile professional relationship at times), I think Jack still believes he can trust Will and use Will's imagination with moderation, since Hannibal is behind bars now, and because Will has a family now - therefore a more stable, grounded life.

Maybe he thinks Will finally shook off Hannibal's influence enough to move on with his life, and when Hannibal tries to have Will's family killed I think he believes he can trust that Will will finally be willing to permanently remove Hannibal from his life by killing him.

It is, of course, a very risky gamble. A gamble he loses, and one he pays for, dearly.

As a member of the audience, it may look for us like Jack is being too trusting and too naive, but I think it's fair to remember that Will has kept a LOT from him. There's so much Jack doesn't know about his relationship with Hannibal.

Jack likely doesn't know that Will willingly (even gleefully) partook in cannibalism with Randall Tier's organs in order to fool Hannibal that he had killed Freddie Lounds. He never heard Will telling Hannibal how much he enjoyed killing Hobbs and Tier, never saw their conversations by the fire. He never saw the way Will speaks with Chiyoh and what he does to her and the prisioner, and he never saw the way he threatens Bedelia.

He never saw the look on Will's face when Hannibal snapped Mason Verger's neck.

He doesn't know that Will was worried if Hannibal could ever be happy while in prison. He didn't see the torn expression in his face when Hannibal didn't give him a fully positive answer.

Most of all, he doesn't know that, after the events of Mizumono, when Will fantasizes about a better world, he thinks about a world where he had chosen Hannibal sooner and had chose to go along and murder Jack with him.

Jack's perception of Will and Hannibal's relationship is distorted by how little he knows about how things really are beetween these two.

And I think Jack doesn't want to believe in Will has such a darker side on his own, because Jack is not the kind of guy who likes to be this wrong. During Will's trial, he struggles with the idea of having been that wrong about him, that his instincts where so wrong. And since the first season Jack has a habit of choosing to believe in the version of events that will better suit him, not matter how likely or unlikely they are.

The idea that after how much he stood by him, that how much he bled and suffered by plotting with Will at the end of season two, that Will has the capacity for so much violence and darkness is something he doesn't want to accept. Easier to see Will as someone who was broken and damaged, maybe beyond repair during the epic struggles Jack has with Hannibal in the course of the seasons than to believe this.

Alana tried to warn him as early as the end of season two that he didn't know any of those men, and if he forced the issue, he was bound to lose.

I think that, during a potential season four, Jack would only realize the colossal weight of his mistake in trusting Will to handle the plan with Hannibal's "fake" escape only when they had proof that Hannibal was still alive and Will had joined then, or when Bedelia showed up sans one leg.

But still, even with the ending that we got in the third season, Jack's decision to close his eyes to Will's darkness and genuine feelings for Hannibal ends up making Jack lose very, very badly.

[thedarkmongoose]

i always thought will looked distraught in this scene bc it brought up memories of his mother’s absence, but it’s that & SO much more. to start, there is an octopus plush in the photo. octopuses are referred to as the “Mother Teresa of the sea. Octopuses symbolize generosity, selflessness, and self-sacrifice.”

the idea of motherhood/self-sacrifice is further explored when jack asks why all of the victims have defensive wounds except for mrs. turner. will answers, “there’s forgiveness.” again, he’s confronted by the selflessness of motherhood - how mothers perform the ultimate sacrifice by giving birth. will himself yearns for the warmth of a mother’s love and can’t understand the children who abandoned it. in the eyes of a child, mother is god, and these kids are defying/rejecting god.

“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” - William Makepeace Thackeray

Czytaj dalej

[shinelikethunder]

you know what makes me go absolutely bugfuck feral? at exactly two points in Hannibal season 3, the soundtrack sliiiiiides into what is, quite distinctively, the opening chords of "Love Crime"

the first is at the very very end of 3x01, when Hannibal caves after an entire episode of trying to live his life without Will, and leaves him a bloody valentine in the church

the second is at the very very end of 3x08, when Will caves after an entire episode of trying to live his life without Hannibal, and goes to visit him in a mind-palace sequence where he walks like a fucking bride down the aisle of the same church

[realisaonum]

“The relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter may be one of the defining TV romances of our time, a baroque spin on the will-they-won’t-they formula…These are two men who struggled to share themselves with others and found, in each other, someone to finally open up to, someone who could understand and accept them. Hannibal challenged our notions of what sort of love we can accept… All the same, there was something very special about a show that slowly developed a male romance that didn’t need to be read into by fans or routinely mocked in bits of pitiful gay panic. Hannibal played things as if it were the most natural thing in the world for these two people to love one another, and it achieved that by making sure everything else was bizarre, grotesque and often horrifying. As a result, we’d be encouraged to latch onto the one thing that seemed, in its own way, stable. I’m going to miss this show.”

— Hannibal Series Finale Review: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner by Noel Kirkpatrick  (via bluebeardsbride-archive)

[devouringyourson]

A collection of my favourite times a review has tried to explain or categorise NBC Hannibal

[devouringyourson]

I can't remember who suggested this addition in the tags but yes you are right the stoned vampires Vulture review is everything

[wizzard890]

I think perhaps the only way in which queer people have achieved true parity with straight people is that queer romantasy is just as bad.

[jellogram]

I should be doing more to appreciate the lack of marvel movies in today's popular culture. I once yearned for marvel movies to have this level of irrelevance. They used to feel almost ozymandian, like an empire that had no beginning and no end. and now tony stark iron man is naught but two vast and trunkless legs of stone.

[kingworm]

rest in peace george michael you would’ve done numbers on here

[beaufortplace]

Hannibal

2.09 “Shizakana”

3.11 “And the beast from the sea”

Parallels

[cannibaltranssexual]

thinking abt them. the pride in claiming chief credit for your own corruption. im not the product of anything external ive been bound to happen since my start

[rocktheholygrail]

2x13 || 3x13

When we’ve gone from this life, Jack Crawford and the FBI behind us, I will always have this place. In your memory palace?

[rocktheholygrail]

1x07 || 3x13

[doveywovy]

idk guys sometimes you just have to accept a ship dynamic is unhealthy, insane, and sometimes abusive. and its not real people so those factors just make it interesting

please stop unfolding the origami crane and smoothing it out bc you got worried the paper was hurting from the bends

[doveywovy]

okay see i don't want to be a dick because i'm not saying you're entirely wrong- showing abusive relationships and clarifying that they're abusive in media does help people recognize abuse in real life. it's probably a really good thing to include in media aimed at kids or 'family viewing'. but that's not what my post is about and it's not the only reason to write abusive fucked up relationships, and acting like it is flattens stories in a way that is ultimately really bad. and you're completely misinterpreting my post if you think the point of it was sometimes we should include Bad Relationships so Kids At Home Will Know Its Bad.

my point was that sometimes it is interesting to read about or write about really weird unhealthy relationships. not educational.

I don't think an author should have to preface their gothic horror with "and of course, fucking a guy whos secretly your cousin and maybe killed your mom is bad and i disavow". i don't think every fanfic that decides to make the love interest a rapist should end with "and he goes to jail, because that was a Bad Thing to Do, and the victim of his behavior went to therapy and got help dealing with the ramifications".

It's fictional. It's not real. It's not a PSA. sometimes the point is to deconstruct the viewpoint of a rapist who doesn't know they're a rapist. sometimes it's exploring how codependent two characters can get if you put them in a jigsaw trap and tie their legs together. sometimes the point is the author thinks it's sexy to imagine getting fucked at knifepoint. sometimes its literally just this:

and all of that is awesome, actually.

[doveywovy]

or to put it much much shorter and continue the metaphor of the original post.

please stop demanding an artist justify why they'd make an origami tiger and that they better publicly state they know that real tigers are dangerous. that the only reason to make an origami tiger is so that you can show it to people so they know what a tiger looks like and they know they're dangerous so they never go near a real tiger!

[will-grahams-straitjacket]

Will Graham's Bookshelf

Reader’s Encylcopedia The Oresteia Complete Seafood Oswald’s Tale by Norman Mailer Robert Frost (!!!) Bernard Shaw (i think) ”____ of the Law” (can’t read it) The Oxford Encyclopedia of English Literature Norman Mailer’s “Tough Guys Don’t Dance” Letters of Ezra Pound “World of Motorcycles” Friends and Apostles: The Correspondence of Rupert Brooke and James Strachey Six Against the Rock by Clark Howard Irwin Shaw’s “Five Decades” “Stephen Spender” biography by Hugh David The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton Ravelstein by Saul Bellows (which is based on the philosopher Allan Bloom. Hmm…) A book called Sisters but i can’t make out the author Some book with “In the Wall” in the title, couldn’t find it “In Two Worlds” i think, not sure what author though Book on Henry James, i think Book with “HG” on it, not sure if it’s in reference to H.G. Wells

This is all i could make out, though there are many more books on his shelf. i used the picture from farfarawaysite and tried to squint, maximize the image, and used a microscope (along with google) to try and figure out some of them.

[will-grahams-straitjacket]

Update: in Ceuf you can see a big book of Shakespeare :) (if you want to see it, pause it where Hannibal’s looking at his bookshelves and the credits say “written by jennifer schuur.” It’s a dark blue book with Shakespeare in gold letters on the spine. It’s upside down and laying flat in the lower right area of the screen.)

And in Shiizakana Will has a Karl Marx book in the mini bookcase beside his fly-tieing table, as well as Tom Wolfe.

[will-grahams-straitjacket]

Book update number 3, i found a higher quality picture of Will’s bookshelf!!!

i can make out

Oscar Wilde (think it’s probably a collection of his works) A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe South Wind by Norman Douglas Sister Carrie by Theodore Deisder Karl A Menninger, a psychiatrist who advocated for treatment rather than punishment for mentally ill criminals.  can’t tell if it’s a book by him or about him, but his name is big. That book about the law might be his “The Law in America” A book by Carl Jung A book by/about Ernest Jones, psychoanalyst/neurologist

[bloodydancy]

Hannibal S1E01 Apéritif

[nbchannibaldaily]

[lemetamorphose]

Hannibal s2e2 "Sakizuke"

[ixilecter]

[lemetamorphose]

Hannibal S03E01 (Antipasto)